Learners' Voices and the Transformation of Schooling Toward a Sustainable Society: A Critical, Cultural-Historical Perspective

• In Event: Learning From Learners: Power, Resistance, and Learners' Voices in an Era of Uncertainty

Abstract

Giving voice to learners is at the center of learner-centered educational reforms, seeking to provide learners with opportunities to influence the content, form, and aims of their schooling (Jenkins, 2006). Often, such efforts are grounded on arguments about “improved student performance” or more equal learning opportunities (Sawyer, 2014). In educational research, the concept of learners’ voices is seldom seen in its capacity of questioning and potentially contributing to transforming the very role and place of schooling in the wider societal context. Such a question, however, is of utmost relevance in the current context of socioecological crisis, where both students’ futures and the role of schooling are at stake. Accordingly, this paper aims to discuss and reconceptualize learners’ voices, going beyond the issue of student performance, and into the question, How may pedagogical projects that center on learners’ voices help us reconceptualize the place and function of schooling in a context of socio-ecological crisis?

We take a critical, cultural-historical perspective that views learners’ voices in the context of learners’ political agency, that is, their freedom to act in a plural public realm (Slakmon & Schwarz, 2017). The critical edge of our approach stems from a recognition that “all education research is intended to inform social change … it is not possible, then, to engage in education research and argue neutrality” (de Royston & Sengupta-Irving, 2019, pp. 2–3). Thus, studying the transformational potential of learners’ voices involves studying the challenges and opportunities for socio-political change brought about in and through engaging learners as a leading force in their education.

To address their transformational potential, we investigate learners’ voices as they develop as part of pedagogical innovations involving research-partnerships between school and external partners to address issues of sustainability and climate justice in local communities. Through comparative analysis (Bateson, 1979) of ethnographic materials documenting those school partnership innovations, we identify general themes, opportunities, and challenges that emerge at the interpersonal and institutional levels as part of the struggle of making learners’ voices and schooling more relevant to their societal context. "Thick analyses" capture the use of multiple analytical strategies on the gathered materials (Evers, 2015).

We examine two case studies involving learners engaging in climate activism through school innovations: (a) a Finnish secondary school project, where students cooperate with cycling activists and city authorities to influence City Council decision-making concerning cycling; and (b) an open schooling network in Norway in which teacher and students collaborate with environmental activists, local industry, and families, to address local sustainability challenges in their local communities. The ethnographic data comprise video recordings, documents and interviews collected through participant observation.

Results clarify how a critical revision of the place and function of learners’ voices can inform transformative and agency-centered pedagogy situated at the intersection between school and the wider society. Moreover, the results highlight pedagogical principles - such as connecting pedagogical activity to external activity systems and expert communities and harnessing students’ productive deviations from a given pedagogical design - that are useful in amplifying learners’ voices and harnessing their transformative potential.

Authors

• Alfredo Jornet Gil, University of Oslo

• Antti Juhani Rajala, University of Oulu